1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a data management apparatus, a data management method, and a data management program, and more particularly to a data management apparatus for generating one file having combination of a plurality of files, a data management method, and a data management program.
2. Description of the Related Art
Recently, an image forming apparatus such as a digital copier includes a storage device such as a hard disk drive (referred to as “HDD” hereinafter) for storing data. Since HDD can store many files, a variety of techniques for managing files have been developed.
Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 2004-21390 discloses an image forming apparatus having a box combination saving function of putting a plurality of jobs together and setting a new processing mode to be stored again in an image memory. However, if combined data is generated by combining original data themselves, the combined data itself has to be changed. In a case where the combined data has many pages, it is difficult to specify the location of a change. On the other hand, if combined data is generated independent of original data, a change made in the original data is not reflected in the combined data so that the combined data has to be changed independently of the change made in the original data. Moreover, if original data is used for a plurality of combined data, a change made in the original data has to be reflected in each of a plurality of combined data. Therefore, all of a plurality of combined data have to be generated again, or the same change has to be made for each, resulting in complicated management.